00:00.00 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Welcome to the ModGolf podcast, where we speak with the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the disruptors, and the influencers who are shaping the future of golf. I'm your host, Colin Weston and today I'm excited because we have a boots on the ground entrepreneur. We've talked to a lot of people that are doing things, whether it's in the tech space, doing these things on a global level, but I just love what we're doing here today with our guest. And across the the golf course owner and operator space we've talked at that 30 000 foot level, whether it's Jay Karen with the Golf Course Owners Association NGCOA and many many others about what's going on across the country, across North America. But today we're flipping that script here and we're looking at it through another lens. 01:02.76 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast This is a case study here of innovation and success. And our guest today is Kyle Holmes. And Kyle is the general manager and managing partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course in Ada, Michigan, in Western Michigan. And Kyle reached out to me and once I saw what he was doing, I was like, "Kyle, come on. You got to come on the ModGolf podcast. It's such a great story!" 01:24.09 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast And what they're doing with Quail Ridge. I have a feeling they're just getting started here. Let's bring him on. Kyle, welcome to the ModGolf Podcast. 01:32.74 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, thanks for having me, Colin. Looking forward to this conversation. 01:35.43 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Absolutely. Okay, so Kyle. Let's start with ah this question I always ask. I know a little bit about you now through our conversations, but I don't know the real answer to this because it's all about that connectivity to golf and what you're doing with Quail Ridge. We're going to get into the innovations. I'm not going to reveal anything quite yet of the awesome things that you're building there. But really it's about community. and connection and about experience. So I want to hear about your first ever golf experience, whatever age that was, and that power of invitation, that person in your life that introduced your golf and put a club in your hand for the first time in that first awesome moment that hooked you for life. 02:13.40 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I would say two people, my grandfather and my dad. Totally different backgrounds. My grandfather just loved the game. Loved to play as much as he could outside of what he did professionally. And my father is a golf course superintendent. And so I grew up around golf. And so I started playing golf. i don't have memories of this but i started playing golf when i was two And I've been playing ever since. 02:42.70 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So you obviously got the bug and it stuck with you because i didn't mention at the top of the show also you are a PGA professional, a PGA member So you're also the head pro at Quail Ridge. so Like A lot of entrepreneurs, you wear a lot of hats, way too many hats here. But that's what we have to do to make things happen. Why don't we start with a brief history of Quail Ridge? 03:38.05 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Okay, Kyle, so why don't you actually start with the Design and the opening of Quail Ridge, which I believe was in 1998. So why don't you tell us before you and your business partner purchased it a year or so ago. Why don't you let us know the the back history of Quail Ridge and then we'll move forward to where you are today. 03:57.35 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, I think like most golf courses, Quail Ridge Golf Club came about. At the beginning of the Tiger boom era. where golf really started to excel into different areas reaching different people. And the people that bought the land, built the golf course and owned it up until they sold to my business partner and I, Tim. They were golfers, but none of them were in the golf space. Held different jobs, different companies. None of them even lived in West Michigan. But Golf courses needed to be built. There wasn't enough for the demand that was rising in that era. And so that's what that's how Quail Ridge started. 04:44.90 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast And I think you mentioned it is an 18-hole track now, par 72, but originally was it was a nine-hole course, was it? 04:51.49 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course In 1998, we opened the first nine holes as the grow-in phase was going through. The plan was always 18 holes, so we got a half a year of nine holes, and then the full 18 opened in 1999. 05:05.39 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go. 05:05.54 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And this has been roughly the same since then. We've made some architectural changes, but nothing drastic. 05:11.51 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Understood. Okay. So you had mentioned to me earlier off camera and off microphone that you have been working at Quail Ridge since 2015. So obviously you had an opportunity to see the business model to see where growth opportunities were. So bring us up to speed then, as far as you and your business partner taking that plunge, and it took a lot of courage I'm sure to do that. Tell us about the transition or that journey of going from employee to owner. 05:45.77 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course It's been quite the ride, to be honest with you. 05:47.12 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast I bet. 05:48.06 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I grew up in Michigan, but when I accepted the job at Quail Ridge, I lived in Minnesota. I was running a course there. We're trying to get back closer to home. We had twins on the way and it was just that our family was growing and things like that. And so I got the Quail Ridge job. Had never played it. Didn't know anything about it. and fell in love real, real early on. I mean just an unbelievable piece of land and just the aura and the essence of the place and the public space that they held in West Michigan. 06:23.99 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And then as I got to know the superintendent, which is a vital relationship between somebody who you know the head pro the GM who runs the business side of things. You have to have a good relationship with your superintendent because that's the person who is making the product look the way. You want to try to sell it to the people you're trying to sell it to. And Tim is unbelievable at his job he's actually was the grow-in superintendent, so he's employee number one at Quail Ridge. So his story is pretty cool that he was the first guy to get there, and then we were able to buy it together last January so we're wrapping up our second full golf season together as owners. 07:04.63 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast I like what you just mentioned there because i've spoken to and worked with hundreds of founders and co-founders and startups both in golf and also in other other sectors and ecosystems. and I find with partnerships and co-founding, which can be tricky. especially when there's two of you. I find sometimes with three, it's easier to make decisions because you can vote the other one out. But one of the strengths I can sense without meeting Tim yet and just getting to know you here, Kyle, is that you both bring different superpowers and skill sets. The equation the one plus one equals three and i've seen in many cases that Both co-founders are duplicating themselves. The fact that they do the same thing and then there's big gaps. So it sounds like that's one of the strengths that you had. Is that something strategically you looked at it or just a natural fit that has melded in it to seem like the the right fit as you two move forward upon your acquisition of Quail Ridge? 08:09.53 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I think it was just kind of a natural fit as we started to work together and watch Quail continue to rise and grow. He is by far the hardest working employee we have. And he's older than I am. He's proven himself for. 25, 30 years in this industry. But yet he still is just every single day doing everything he can to make that place look incredible. And he is learning more and more about business. But when it came down to the business side of it he started to recognize in me it's like oh Kyle knows how to do those things. And I'm like, oh, Tim knows how to do those things. And so we talk all the time. But we both have that trust and faith in each other that like I'm going to do my job and he's going to do his job. And because we both do them so well. the place will be successful. 09:08.18 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Love this. So before we get into your strategic plan of where you saw opportunity infusing technology in and what you're creating with The Nest and where you go that's The main thing we're going to be talking about here today because that's really exciting about to open I believe when we release this podcast and the next couple of days right after, almost right on the day that we release this. this episode. 09:32.95 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So one of the things I know with entrepreneurship, you don't know everything. You cannot wait until you have all the answers because that never happens. Just like perfect never happens. So you have strengths that you can play on both with you and your business partner. And then you just have to figure out the other pieces as you go. So I'm curious to learn. How did you manage to structure or figure out the best way to proceed with purchasing this and negotiate a deal you don't have to talk about the numbers, keep that to yourself. 10:17.14 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast But I'm really curious to learn that. Did you have to get out of your comfort zone a little bit for that? Or did you rely on other people within your circle or maybe had some advisors or consultants? So so how did you manage to piece that together where I'm assuming that was not your background at the time? 10:33.90 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, I'm a lifelong learner. I love to read. I feel like as I've aged I've gotten a lot of humility in the fact that I don't know everything and there's not enough time in the day to learn everything. 10:49.94 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Mm hmm. 10:50.66 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And so I love to ask questions. I love to learn from other people. And I've also been put in positions in my industry where I've had to oversee certain areas of a golf course that I hadn't really done before. My first foray in Minnesota to go from an assistant to a general manager. All of a sudden I had a head chef and a food and beverage manager and I hadn't done anything in food and beverage. 11:16.35 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course So instead of reading a hundred books and acting like I knew more than they did I just asked him "How do you do what you do? How do you make the menu this way? How do you sell an event this way?" 11:27.30 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I've been fortunate to possess those skill sets and I continue to ask and ask and ask. As I age throughout my career I know more and more and more. But I don't pretend to be the smartest person in the room at every moment because oftentimes if we're talking about something that's not "how do you make this business grow faster?" or how do you fix somebody's slice? There's somebody else in the room that can that has a better answer. And I would love to hear from them. 12:02.34 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast I love that response! Okay, so we're going to continue on here with what you're building and that is The Nest. So let's get right into it here. I'm really curious to hear about how you envisioned this. But before that, why don't you pull back? Why don't you let everyone know what The Nest is? Because I know you're super excited. I know the energy level is very high with you as you're very close to having this baby open up here. So what's going on with The Nest at Quail Ridge? 12:30.72 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, so best I can tell it'll be first of its kind, definitely in Michigan. potentially throughout the country in the way that we've structured it. And so it is an eight bay indoor outdoor golf simulator so we're calling it a dual mode bay. 12:49.27 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Mm hmm. 12:49.53 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course So the differentiator is You don't have to move. Whether you want to hit your ball down the range. or you want to hit into an impact screen. So right now it's 75 degrees outside if the building was open and you wanted to play Pebble Beach because you're going there next week and you just want to get a feel for it. You can open the garage door, hit down the range on TrackMan 4 technology. Watch your ball fly down hole number one, play the whole course all the way through. Now if it's January and it's 15 degrees and there's a northerly wind and it's cold. just keep the garage door down you hit into an impact screen and it'll be projected onto that screen overhead which is the most common form of simulator golf. 13:36.55 The ModGolf Podcast Mm hmm. 13:37.21 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course But you don't have to move. You don't have to go from one bay to the other or turn around or any other different way because there's a lot of places in the country that will have an indoor building next to an outdoor range. Ours is on the other side of our range. In the middle of the summer these people hitting off of grass and people taking a lesson or a clinic. They're going to be hitting at each other. They're just 375 yards apart. 14:08.27 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Now when you formulated this on how to look even before the purchase of Quail Ridge you had mentioned to me earlier that creating something like The Nest was part of the business model. So it seems like from Quail Ridge and having looking at the golf course, you didn't pick up some undervalued, rundown dog track. It's already a beautiful course and in good shape. So it sounds like you already had recurring revenue there from a solid player base there. But you saw other opportunities. So how did you strike that balance when you were looking at the property of seeing what is working already and we just need to enhance that a bit? And then with the property where you're putting The Nest on. And by the way here for our listeners, I do encourage you also to become viewers because Kyle and I are going to jump over to the ModGolf Youtube channel afterwards. We're going to pull up some visuals there their website and some other things so you'll be able to see exactly what the nest looks like so yeah i'll include the link in the show notes for that uh so yeah hopefully after you finish listening you'll also jump over into and becoming a viewer over there so okay as you and i are going to wave our hands in the air here and use our words on the audio podcast, so yeah tell us a little bit about that Kyle, what you envisioned and perhaps there were other options. I'm sure it wasn't the only thing you thought what this can look like. Maybe you had something that was even more expansive or different ideas. Tell us about that that process as far as envisioning what this could look like and what you've arrived on and about to open in a week or so. 15:52.12 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, i would say it was an interesting couple of years of going through off seasons in Michigan where golf course is going to close roughly around November 15th. It's a historical average and open again, March 15th. So you're looking at like a pretty big stretch of time where there's no revenue coming in, but the bills don't stop. Got people on salary. They're going to keep getting paid. We have to pay taxes and heating bills and all the things that come with it. And so you'd have this great year and you'd build up the base and then all of a sudden you would just slowly watch it go down, just to do it all over again. That is the cycle of any northern golf course that doesn't have lodging year round or a ski resort or something like that. 16:43.25 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And so what can we do in the winter? And around the time I started thinking about it, some places around us were starting to open up simulator golf. In warehouses, there's a course down the street from us that turn their banquet center into an in indoor heated facility. And all these places did it right. When they put them in, they were nice. And so I was like, "are we just going to do what everyone else is doing?" Three years later and hope that people will look at us. It just never felt right. So I was like, "alright, we should do something different". You get a lot of ideas, lots of innovative type of things. And they're not always right. 17:30.32 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And oftentimes we don't even put them into play. But every once in a while, one I just can't shake. And I feel like The Nest was one of those ideas where it came to me. And I pulled Tim aside and I talked to him and he was like, "oh, I like that!" We started talking about like, where should we put it? We have this massive range. We're going to need power and sewer and septic water. We're like, "on the other side of our range is our maintenance barn and it already has all those things that it has a parking lot. What if we put it there?" Well, we don't have the internet at the maintenance barn. What if we call up Comcast? See if they can bring internet to the maintenance barn and so we just started doing these things slowly. And there was a bunch of trees. You couldn't see the maintenance barn when you were hitting on the grass side of the range. So one off season when there's four of us. We just cut down a bunch of trees and cleared the land. I'm like okay we could put it here and we slowly kept doing these things until we got to a point where we felt like we could afford this. This is the time to do it. Simulator golf or indoor golf is probably a better way to put it is continually growing. I saw in 2025 that more golf rounds were played indoors then out for the first time. 18:48.84 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast That's correct. Yeah. 18:51.29 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And so we're like. "This is the time!" Because our golf course is our main feature. So when it's nice out, we want people to play our golf course. But why not give them an option in the winter. And what if we do it right and we can hire the best instructors and have clinics five days a week and have the best club fitters. We can keep that building busy year round without tapping into our golf population on our actual golf course. 19:20.21 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Now I'm curious to hear about the mix. or what we call the avatar, the persona, the type of player or customer that you're looking at? Are you looking to do a mix between and a high performance and people that just love to golf and improve that you said with the the club fitting and the lessons and of the high end courses on the simulators. Are you also looking to tap into the entertainment and food and beverage side? So I'm curious here, let's say it was a Saturday night and in mid-November and you're open this year. Do you think that most of the people in the eight bays will be grinding away on their game or will there be an an option that you can flip it around and then you'll have you have the music a little bit louder and you'll have a food and beverage and an entertainment component to that too? So tell us about that is what you're envisioning with the kind of the the revenue mix and the guest or the patron mix. 20:15.18 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I would think that we're trying to tap into everything. 20:17.73 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Hmm. 20:17.88 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And so we anticipate Fridays Saturdays even Sundays during NFL season and things like that you'll get a lot of groups of guys that want to come out and play or groups of women or date nights. We'll have a full bar. We also have a lounge so we'll have couches and TVs with sporting events. Michigan is a very, very league based type of state. And we've seen that play out over the last 20 years in the middle of the summer on our golf course. And so we figured during the week, in the evenings, we'll have a lot of leagues, so we'll take that up. We also have a lot of colleges around us. We have Davenport and Aquinas and Calvin College. I We have eight or nine local high schools that have really good golf programs within 10 or 12 miles of us. So we assume they'll try to keep their game sharp in the winter. In my opinion, we have the best director of instruction in the entire state. and so happens to probably be the best Michigan PGA professional. in the entire state so he's a heck of a player. 21:27.35 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And how many people when a new driver comes out, they go to one of these big box stores? And they get a fitting from a 22 year old associate who looks at a couple of numbers and he's like, here's your club. He's got sales quotas and targets he's trying to hit. I want people to get fit for what's best for them from somebody who's been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. Who doesn't care what club you pick. Whatever's right for you. And so we're going to have that component as well. And so I think we're going to cover every bass you could possibly cover. And we do. Gosh, we probably do 120 to 150 players a week through clinic series that start and may end in the end of September. 22:10.36 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Wow. 22:12.01 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course We cycle them and we do women's and short game and how to hit it straighter, course management. How to pick up 10 yards. We do all these things already. So now we can do that with a ton of technology. 22:27.98 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So I'd like to hear. As far as before you purchase Quail Ridge - so I can understand, our listeners can understand - is Quail Ridge a semi-private course? Do you have memberships? And also, if I wanted to book a tee time, I saw on your website, it says I can. So are you classified as a semi-private course that you do have members and you also are open to the public? 22:52.34 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I guess technically we're semi-private, but we call ourselves public because we only have 35 or 40 members and they're people that have been around for 20 years. They have restrictions they can't play on the weekends when public players want to play. It's just that people like really, really care about the place and they know how to get around and get their 100 rounds in throughout the summer. But you as a public player, you can book seven days a week. No question. Whenever you want. 23:21.11 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Understood. That's the reason I asked this, so it appears to me that the brand and the loyalty at Quail Ridge was already baked in and established so you didn't have to build that from from zero whereas some of these indoor places for example i'm a member here in in Vancouver Canada, just down the street four blocks from me i walk to my indoor simulator club which has two bays. People think I'm weird. It'll be like 38 degrees out and raining and in the dark and I'm walking with my golf clubs. But I do. And they have to start from zero. So for them to build that up, even though they're only looking at 200 memberships. That was a lot of work. So it seems like you've already got within the community there, what you talked about, you're already tied in and people know Quail Ridge, they honour it and you're just extending that experience through technology and in what you're doing with The Nest. So that sounds like it's a great advantage that you already have that you're just amplifying now. 24:18.15 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, I don't have any metric to prove this but last year in 2025 we did 45,000 golf rounds in seven and a half months. Arguably, we're one of the top two or three busiest public golf courses in the entire state of Michigan as a single 18 hole play. And so we have a very big and broad following and we have a very faithful following because our course conditions are always great. They're always going to be treated great. It's pretty unique in the fact that you can get to downtown Grand Rapids in 12 minutes but you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere because our property is so vast. There's so few homes that are noticeable. Every hole is its own hole with trees. So you never hear anyone yell fore because you can't hit anyone on a different hole because they're not next to each other. 25:14.93 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Well, I've had a look at your website again that we will pull up with a hole by hole of the of the course there and it's a beautiful parkland style course for what I can gather there it would work very nicely with my two-way miss off the off the tee sometimes when I'm spraying it around on those bad days, that perhaps I won't get as punished as much as some other tighter courses that I play here in the in the Pacific Northwest. 25:41.39 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Unless your dispersion gets too big and then you then you get into the tall heather and it is hard to get it out of that stuff. 25:47.63 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Well, I spent a lot of time when I was in Ireland and Scotland last year and in that and Heather sounds so soft and wispy but it's nothing but that. It's almost impossible to find your ball once it's like one inch in that stuff so yes, if i do have the chance to play at Quail Ridge i'll i'll make sure I'll be hitting three wood off the tees so I won't be spraying it as much. So we'll see how that ah that goes. 26:11.54 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah. 26:13.91 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast But one of the things I wanted to touch on here with the golf course itself is the location. So as you said, it's pastoral, feels like you're in the middle of nature which you are, even though you are quite close to urban settings. So you found that one of your advantages or part of your secret sauce is that you are close to Grand Rapids. That you have a lot of people in that catchment there that are less than a half an hour drive away. So as far as filling that tee sheet and even people then coming for an experience at The Nest where I'm assuming you want people to stick around for two or three hours and make an an evening out of it, not just go there and grind and hit a bucket of balls and leave. So where do you see this opportunity and how are you going about marketing this with The Nest? What's your strategy? 27:03.84 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, so as far as the public landscape, public off course landscape in Metro Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids is growing every single year. uh I mean, it's close to Lake Michigan. 27:15.62 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course We do have winter, but they're not very hard. We might get 30 or 40 inches, for a bad winter we'll get 60 or 70. But it's not negative 10 every single day. And there's not a lot of public golf in Grand Rapids, And there's a lot of people. We have in Metro Grand Rapids alone, there's probably 1 .5 to 1 .7 million people. And in that upper echelon of high tier public golf courses, there's four. Maybe. So all the people that run the other ones and I'm friends with them, we have different golf courses and we're trying to do our own thing. We don't feel like we have to compete against each other because there's not enough places to play. If you're really seeking out top-level golf. And so going into before The Nest started getting constructed, we didn't spend anything on marketing. We weren't anywhere. We didn't do any magazines. We didn't do any digital ads, anything like that because we were always full leading into The Nest. I felt like I really have to tell the story of what this is because it's so unique. that people don't understand. 28:28.63 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course If you just say, "hey, we're putting in a simulator golf building". They'll be like "okay well there's eight of them within 10 miles of you." Like well, that's not gonna do the trick because it's not accurate. So then when I say we have dual mode bays. People are like "I don't know what that means" and so we have really amped up our marketing to explain to people, hey this is unique. This is something that you will not find anywhere else. And so give us a shot and come see it when it's open. And I think you'll be convinced pretty early on that I can't get this somewhere else. 28:03.24 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast And I've noticed on your website, your Nest update, your league signups are live. So you're looking also for founder memberships. Looks like you're very plugged into the value of having the recurring loyalty of people coming not just even by themselves or even in groups and playing in these leagues. Sounds like what you're extending on your green grass experience and the eight months that you're open on the golf course and then emulating that also in a virtual environment. So tell us how that's going. Is that what you'd like to focus on as far as having more of a membership base and league signups rather than having people just drop in? I'm sure you'd have much more stability on your revenue forecasting on that side. So tell us a little bit about how you landed on that as far as the mix of what you see of people on it over a course of a week or a month dropping into the eight bays of The Nest. 28:25.20 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, so the best way to explain it is how I view the golf course throughout the year when we're open. Is there's different segments of golfers. You have your senior golfers that want to play Monday through Thursday at a little bit rest lesser rate. You have your charity corporate outings. Our league schedule, Monday through Thursday, front and back nine is full. It's been full for a decade plus. All those segments can't play at the same time. And if you try to pretend like they can, then you're going to lose a bunch of them. 28:42.70 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Right. 28:43.47 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And so, the way that we have viewed our golf course is, "OK, well, we're going to see this segment Monday through Thursday during the day. Then we're going to see our leagues Friday, Saturday, or Sunday". We don't have any discounts of any kind. You can't play nine holes. We don't have a senior discount because everybody wants to play in those days and so we maximize that. And that's how I viewed The Nest as well. I want to find those founding members who are the grinders. The guys who want to dial in their swing three days a week at between 9 and 12 in the early morning, go to breakfast, whatever. Maybe they work from home and they own their own business. They can take up that segment. College, high school teams. They can come in early Saturday, Sunday mornings. Leagues during the week and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, especially in the evenings. 28:57.85 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Centered around a sporting event, a Michigan state football game, Michigan state basketball is always good. Get four, six, eight, 10 of your friends, rent a couple of bays. Hang out there for three hours. Grab a drink, sit in the lounge afterwards. Turn it into an entire experience. 29:09.76 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So one thing you mentioned earlier with the stats that the number of rounds played in virtual golf compared to green grass last year had surpassed so it's flipped a little bit and as more venues such as The Nest open up all over North America and the world, that number, that gap is only going to increase. And I've spoken to so many amazing people, the community builders that are. Communities that haven't been welcome to golf whether that's black women that are starting with golf and doing some awesome things there or Latina communities or especially with younger people. And especially with women. And a lot of golf course owners and operators, they want to host events. And you touched on this earlier, Kyle, you just don't physically have capacity. Your throughput is four people at a time every, I don't know what your cadence is, nine, 10, 12 minutes. 29:49.14 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast And that's what it is. You can't scale that in any other way. So having The Nest, is this an opportunity? Because one of the stats I also heard is that 40 % of people that are playing simulator golf are women, that's double if not almost triple of what you get on the green grass experience. So my question to you Kyle here, do you also see this as an opportunity to then have some inventory? Some of the awesome women that I have on ModGolf are creating community and are wanting to host an event. They can't do it on a golf course, but all of a sudden they can do it on a Friday night or maybe a Tuesday afternoon and combine that with food and a fashion show or whatever else that is. So do you see that as an opportunity now that you can then open up The Nest and book? So you can have younger golfers, more diverse golfers and having their communities come in and having their first golf experience and a less intimidating, more fun way? 30:02.11 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Absolutely. I do. And you use a really good word in there, less intimidating. And so like when we broke into the clinic-based Tuesday at 5 for an hour, things like that. The women's clinics would sell out in a day. We'd have to cap them because we don't have enough instructors at the time when we were doing it So be like, all right, the first 12 people to sign up. Sometimes we put it out there and like in the first three or four hours, they'd fill right up. And it was like, hey, come learn how to play golf in an environment where nobody's going to judge you. You're going to get good instruction. And you're going to be around other people. And when I first started hosting them, the first question I would ask, I would just have everyone go around the putting green. And I would say "just tell me your name. and how long you've been playing golf" and the first first woman would say, "My name's Sam, and I've been playing golf for 45 years, but I took 30 years off as I was raising my kids." And then the next one, "my name's Becky and last week was the first time I ever touched a golf club". 30:38.01 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Hmm. 30:39.92 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course And then you get. a couple different stories but by the end of it all of a sudden there's five or six people who are saying that this is the first time i've ever been to a golf course or I just retired and my husband plays four days a week. And I just want to go out and play. And so it immediately sets that standard of like. It's okay to learn. at whatever age you're at. And golfers have this huge fear and I get it as an instructor, I get it. You feel like everyone's watching you. And it's like. Nobody really cares within your group. 30:51.33 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yes. 30:51.65 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course They don't really care what you do. And from an instructor standpoint. You want to find those people. Who, if you whiff three or four times. It's okay. If we just make this little tweak. We'll make contact. And then three shots later, it's airborne, and then it's 25 yards and then it's 75 yards. And once people cross that threshold. Are they ever not going to play golf again? 31:17.73 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yeah. Yeah. 31:18.32 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course it's such an empowering moment where you're this seems so easy, I just did it. It's way harder than I thought. But now I can kind of do it. You have to come back. 31:58.88 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yeah, and with The Nest and virtual golf experiences. You're knocking down some of those other of intimidation barriers. And that is pace of play. I hear this from a lot of women that are beginner golfers and are they, you know, when they're playing double bogey, even triple bogey golf, they just feel bad and they get harassed. They can feel that negative energy of the people around them. 32:34.25 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast They don't like that pressure. So between the pace of play. and the rules and the etiquette and having to learn all that and if you're At The Nest those three things fall by the wayside. You don't have to worry about those at all and those are things you can slowly start to weave into the conversation while you're hitting balls and talking about them before they even have that first green grass on course experience. So it's a great onboarding opportunity i see for what you're creating there to then create that funnel to eventually get beginner golfers on the golf course in a way that they feel comfortable and also everyone around that's played the course since 1998 also feel comfortable with having them around. 33:34.45 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah, that's so true. I mean those barriers still exist today. I've been in this industry now 17 or 18 years. I'm seeing it get better. especially after COVID because there's such a new influx of golfers and people that have been playing for 30 years prior to COVID. They just had to accept the fact that like, hey, golf is popular. people want to play it and if somebody's playing a little slow it's not because they're purposely trying to play slow And technology. I mean, having GPS on your carts, we can passively send a message or just have a little thing that turns yellow on their screen. And it's like, hey, you just fallen a little bit behind. You don't have to have that awkward conversation with a starter or anything like that. And so it's been so fun to watch golf. grow in that way. And knock those barriers down because. I've yet to meet somebody who's played golf saying "I don't wanna do that ever again". 34:32.39 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course It's just getting them to play golf. to begin with. That's the hurdle. and if we can get that hurdle lower and lower and lower then more and more people are going to play. 34:45.63 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast And when you first got in the golf and industry, you've been involved in it longer than I have. I've been in it for about a dozen years or so now. Even then, when I first got into it, there almost seemed like as a business model, like golf was getting in its own way. It's almost like the way you'd go about not making people feel comfortable for their first time. That's a terrible way to position your product. And yes, as far as experience and customer service that keeps getting better and better, there's still work to do. 35:16.59 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast But what you're creating with The Nest, it just helps to amplify the opportunity for a positive experience for that first time. So it's like anything with a product or a service, whatever that is, if that first experience you have is a bad one, to get them back. is almost impossible. And guess what? They're going to tell all of their friends. It's like going to a restaurant. and I was in the service industry as a waiter in hospitality for many years in my 20s. And one thing I learned earlier on is it's the people you don't know that are having the conversation. beneath the iceberg. And it's either end of the spectrum that they've had this amazing experience they're going to remember that one. If they've had a disastrous experience, they're going to remember that one. Everything in the middle, I think our brains as a kind of a survival and coping message. It kind of falls by the wayside. And those negative experiences, they will tell all of their friends because it makes for a good story. And guess what? Now you don't even know the silence that's going on. And I've seen that in the restaurant industry. So I'm sure you've seen that in golf also, and that you're making a real effort to improve that, to make sure that first experience is a positive one every single time. 36:26.91 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah. it's a constant at the forefront of our minds, if you ask any person that works at Quail Ridge, whether they're a bartender, or they're behind the pro shop, or they're washing carts. We want people to feel like they're home. when they come to Quail Ridge because Everybody loves to come home. We all love to go on vacation. one of the best parts about when vacation's over is when you're done traveling. Walk back into your home. There's just that peace and comfort. And so we try to approach our conversations in that way, knowing that their experience on the golf course will be great. because the golf course is great. But you can have a great golf course and a bad experience. in you're going to remember the bad experience not the great golf course And so you do absolutely have to treat people like, hey. Welcome to our home. Welcome into Quail Ridge or whatever golf course that somebody else is running. We want you here. Is there anything we can do for you? 37:14.88 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Now with a lot of businesses, you want to be able to scale that. And it seems with Quail Ridge, you're not able to open up another 18 holes. Maybe you can have eight more bays with The Nest but it seems like what you have is there's a finite capability of what you have just from the physical land constraints, even though it sounds like you have a big property there. But you had mentioned when we were trying to get on this call to record this a week or so ago, you were traveling on the road. I won't say. where or what golf courses, but you are looking to scale it seems now by now replicating what you've done at Quail Ridge. Now that you're on the verge of nailing that, you're looking to scale that. So I believe now you're getting quite comfortable with this ownership gig and perhaps looking across the U .S. at acquiring one or more other properties to apply the same formula. Is that is that what you're up to? 37:58.68 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I would love to buy as many golf courses as I could over the next 20 plus years within reason of what would make sense. And Quail Ridge is my home. Like that's my base. It's I live just down the road from it. My kids go to school just on the road from it. like this is This is where our life is. But I can teach people how to make golf courses successful. And so I figure, well, if I can find a good value and I can find a course that has all the right stuff but it's just been mismanaged which happens all over the place in every industry, not just golf. 38:16.29 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I can seek out the right people. and fill in the gaps for them. And then just check in. you know like carry my laptop everywhere I go whether I with ah whether i travel or not. I can look at tee sheets. Everything is so different than it was 15 years ago. When I first got in the industry, we were taking tee times in a book with a pencil. And now I can open up a tab and I can see as this group checked in, how many rounds are we going to do today? I can log into our security cameras and who punched in when did the doors get unlocked. You can do all of this remotely There's just not a ton of people. And I know there's a lot of really, really. unbelievable PGA professionals out there, but in the public space I haven't met a lot of them. where they know how to grow a business within what they already have. And I've been really, really good at that in my career. So I figure if I can do more of it. Why not? 39:20.40 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Love that. Love that. Well, hey, why don't we end there? I do have so many more questions to ask you. and One. avenue I want to go down is the design process with the nest but i'm going to hold off on that because my background in architecture and design and construction so i want to completely nerd out on that side, but we're going to save that for the ModGolf YouTube channel because I can pull up some visuals there that people can actually see what we're talking about. 39:43.59 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course Yeah. 39:45.29 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So I really want to hear about that journey over the last couple of years of starting with schematic design, what could not only be built, but perhaps also what you have rejected or you pivoted or your course corrected along that. So I want to hear that journey and we're going to focus on that on the ModGolf YouTube channel so so for a change, I'm going to show some restraint. I wish I did that on the golf course a little more after I've hit a bad shot and then try to recover with a hero shot. So yeah, unlike on the golf course there, I'm going to show a little bit of discipline here and hold off on that conversation. So hey, with that, Kyle Holmes, General manager and managing partner at Quail Ridge. Love what you're doing. Love the entrepreneurial spirit here because it takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of courage to do what you're doing. and It sounds like it's all coming together. at The Nest and at Quail Ridge so Kyle hey, thanks so much for joining us on the ModGolf podcast today. I really enjoyed this conversation. 40:04.66 Kyle Holmes - General Manager and Managing Partner of Quail Ridge Golf Course I appreciate your time. Thank you as well.